For the third consecutive year, a scientific symposium will celebrate Franco-American cooperation with Georgia Tech and Georgia Tech Lorraine (GTL) of which Yves Berthelot is the President. The partnership will be explored through the Georgia Tech Lorraine-CNRS Unité Mixte Internationale (UMI 2958) established at the GTL campus in 2006 and directed by Abdallah Ougazzaden. In 2009, the creation of a CNRS mirror site in Atlanta has highlighted the research collaborative exchanges between Metz and Atlanta.

The objective of this symposium is to implement new industrial partnerships with the Lafayette Institute and the GTL-UMI in order to initiate innovative collaborations on automotive application and robotics. The exemplary cooperation of the GTL-UMI with the Open Lab GT-PSA Peugeot Citroen in materials, optoelectronics and robotics will be exposed in this symposium as a structuring model of innovation between research and industry.

GTL has been fuelled in many ways by GTL-UMI carrying out research in the domains of telecommunications, innovative materials, secure networks, nanotechnologies. The laboratory conducts a unique transatlantic collaborative program of research. Research faculty and graduate students from Georgia Tech, French universities (Supelec, ENSAM, Paul Verlaine University, Franche-Comté University), and other CNRS laboratories work on joint research projects sponsored by industry and by regional or national funding.
In 2010, during the event France-Atlanta: Together towards Innovation, agreements were signed between Georgia Tech and French Officials coming from Lorraine. This concluded the creation in Metz of the Lafayette Institute, with the objective of creating a favourable environment for high tech service to industry, applied R&D, and spin-off companies in the optoelectronic sector. This structure will enable the creation of innovative products based on the research and scientific results of the GTL-UMI. The symposium “Photonics, Materials, Nanotechnology and Applied Robotics” was an exploration of those fields of applied research.

In 2011, France-Atlanta: Together towards Innovation initiated a strong cooperation between GTL and industries participating at the symposium: PSA Peugeot Citroën, Lumoflex, Siltronix and Imerys. The French Ambassador, François Delattre, made the opening of the symposium “Georgia Tech Lorraine: Enabling US-French Cooperation in R&D and in Higher Education”.